Haringey wins Borough of the Year award for school travel success
Thursday 17 July 2008
Haringey Council has carried off a London-wide transport award after becoming one of the first boroughs in the capital to have green travel plans in place for every school.
Haringey won the School Travel Plan - Borough of the Year award at the 5th Smarter Travel Awards on Thursday 10 July, held by Transport for London (TfL).
The award comes weeks after the final schools in the borough submitted school travel plans for approval by the government and TfL. That meant the council achieved 100 per cent of schools with travel plans a year ahead of the Mayor of London’s target.
The school travel plans, drawn up with support from the council and TfL, identify measures to make it safer and more attractive for pupils and parents to walk or cycle to school, along with ways of improving road safety education and travel awareness.
Since 2005 school travel plans have led to a five per cent decrease in the number of car journeys being made to Haringey schools. Associated road safety schemes, funded by TfL, have also been introduced around more than 20 of the borough’s primary and secondary schools since 2003.
Cabinet Member for Environment and Conservation, Cllr Brian Haley, said:
“Over the last few years we have really led the way in London for promoting and implementing school travel plans.
“We’ve overseen a significant reduction in the number of children injured or killed on the borough’s roads, along with a fall in school run traffic, which is helping us in our efforts to tackle climate change at a local level.
“I’m delighted that our successes so far have been recognised at these awards. But we now need to press on with our efforts to improve road safety around all of our schools and get even more children walking or cycling to school, rather than being taken by car.”
Among the Haringey initiatives recognised by judges are:
- Haringey’s selection as a government case study for its school travel plan work with special schools
- All pupils at Haringey schools receive newsletters informing them of school travel plan developments and issues
- The council consults with children on school travel plans through “planning for real” sessions
- Personal safety training is offered for all schools with an approved school travel plan
- The council works with sustainable transport charity Sustrans and TfL to promote cycling in schools
- Over 50 schools now take part in a Walk on Wednesday (WOW) scheme, through which pupils walk to school once a eek and receive a badge at the end of the month to acknowledge their efforts. •The council has a Transport Ambassadors Programme, where secondary schools act as transport ambassadors and deliver projects and talks to feeder primary schools
The School Travel Plan award comes just over a year after Haringey was named Most Improved Transport Borough in London at the London Transport Awards, run by the magazine Transport Times.
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